Knitted a Blanket (14/366)

I learned to knit either in middle or high school – I can’t remember which – and I think I just learned on a whim. My great-grandmothers both knitted (I still have blankets from them), my grandmothers did too, and my mom did as well – though each generation knitted less than the one before. I guess you could say the trend continued. I learned how to knit and crochet, just the basic stitches, but I had never had the patience to finish any project – except maybe one crocheted scarf (I think).

On July 4th, 2011, my niece was born, and the nation celebrated. The first granddaughter in the family, the first baby girl in our family in over 30 years. Awesome! Before she showed up last year, Nick built her a bunny. This year, I decided to knit her a blanket.

I actually bought the yarn for this project for Nick last year when we picked up the bunny kit. This was before we officially knew if there’d be a new nephew or niece, so I chose somewhat neutral colors (even though I really thought she’d be a girl). I started knitting on December 28th. I knew the holidays were going to be busy, but I wanted to finish this blanket in time for Rebekah’s baby dedication on 1/15. Here’s what I had after the first day of knitting (it was really just the start of it – I didn’t knit through that many rows).

January 2:

January 12:

I hadn’t really gotten too much of a chance to knit at large blocks at a time up until here, but at this point I only had two days left and the blanket was only a little over halfway done. I spent basically all my free time knitting from this day on. My hands were getting cramped! But I was determined (the blanket was to be two skeins worth of yarn).

Late night, January 14 (success!):

It’s not perfect, or fancy, but two skeins of yarn and 18 days from when I started, it’s done. A few challenges or snags (pun totally intended) along the way:
— Since I chose for the blanket to be two skeins of yarn large, I had to change yarns during the project (another first!)
— I should have measured the length of the row of stitches I started with (determining the width of the final blanket) – the blanket ended up being more square than I’d wanted
— I didn’t look closely enough at my work to catch mistakes, so I didn’t catch them until it was way too late to go back to fix them
— Using a circular needle would have made this piece more manageable, but I was just trying to use what I had
— I forgot I needed yarn to bind off or finish the end of the piece (enough to do a whole extra row), so I ended up running out of yarn, having to unravel an entire row to use for binding off and do it all over again.

Overall, this was a fun project – knitting is one of those things that can become a mindless, repetitive task (in a good way) and you can just take a time out, sit for a while, be still, and yet still be working on getting something done. Perfect for today’s crazy, constantly moving lifestyles that are sometimes almost completely devoid of “me” time. Although I felt super rushed to finish the blanket on a certain day, I’m glad it went this way, because I really am not sure if I’d have seen this project to completion if there hadn’t been a set deadline.